Carrie Tollefson

A Daughter of Title IX Grows Up

In January of 1977, a life as a world-class runner was probably the last thing she or her parents could envision.

Instead, she became one of the first residents of her small town of Dawson (population 1,600) to ride in an air ambulance, a pulmonary aneurysm necessitating an airlift to the University of Minnesota hospital in the Twin Cities. "They never thought I’d be an athlete," she says now, laughing with the perspective of 30 years of proving that assessment about as wrong as it could be.

Tollefson was born into the first generation of American girls to grow up completely under Title IX, a law passed in 1972 to ensure equal athletic rights and opportunities for women. In Minnesota, where being outdoors and playing sports is perhaps more ingrained in the culture than anywhere else, the effects of this new regulation were quick to take effect. "We pretty much had everything the guys did," Tollefson recalls of her early athletic life. "We never really thought we couldn’t do what they did. By the time I was a senior in high school, some girls were even going out for the wrestling team."

Tollefson’s own sports career began much younger, at age five, when she decided that rather than watch her older sisters play basketball during Sunday afternoon open gym, she’d join in. It was a sport she continued right through high school. "It took me a long time to realize I wasn’t going to be a college basketball player," she says, thinking back to endless Friday nights spent playing pickup hoops games. "My life revolved around sports," she says.

A Quick Run to the Top

One of those sports was running, which she started at an equally early age. "I have a picture of me running some little road race when I was five," she says. Her father, John, was a runner himself, and served as an early role model for her. "I didn’t really start running seriously until seventh grade," she recalls. "That’s when my dad would get me out the door, and come running with me." Those father-daughter runs continued for another dozen years, and Tollefson still treasures the time spent together on the run with her father. "That was kind of my time to have with my dad, when we could talk and get to know each other. I think it’s important for dads to get out there with their kids, especially their daughters. You can always talk to your mom, but sometimes it’s harder with fathers. It was great my dad took the time to run with me."

It was during those runs that her father, who started running after a high school and college football career, saw the potential for athletic greatness in his daughter. Yet he never pushed her, allowing her to decide on her own how seriously she would pursue the sport.

It didn’t take long for her talent as a runner to emerge; in eighth grade, she ran 10:41 for two miles. "My dad said, ‘This is what we’ve been telling you; you can be really good at this.’ But he also said, ‘If you really want to do this, let’s do it the right way’."

Tollefson already possessed that motivation to excel, engendered by an experience during her first season of competitive running. "In seventh grade I finished ninth in the cross country championships. The top eight finishers got to stand on the awards platform. "I told my mom, ‘From now on, I want to be standing on that platform.’ From age 12 I knew what it was like to get beat, and I didn’t like it."

That competitive drive carried Tollefson to unprecedented success in scholastic running: five cross country championships, eight outdoor titles, and ninth, fifth and 15th place finishes at the Foot Locker national championships.

Once again, Tollefson found she had been born at the right time, as women’s collegiate running was achieving equality with, and sometimes superiority to, the men’s, with scholarships being dangled like so much candy before the eyes of high school phenoms. Although several colleges expressed interest in Tollefson, it was Villanova, whose women were beginning to fashion a reputation as impressive as their men, that won her services. "I couldn’t pass up being a part of that legacy of Olympians and Penn Relays champions," she says. "Going there was like a dream come true." When she reported for her freshman year, Tollefson and her parents might have thought there was an element of a nightmare to it, though. "I never knew how long a drive it was from Minnesota to Philadelphia," she laughs.

Tollefson quickly became an important cog in the Wildcat women’s running machine, but after her sophomore year, she was tossed a curveball that could have derailed not only her running career, but her entire life.

Focusing Through Fear

When the outdoor track season ended, a persistent pain in her left heel was diagnosed as a bone tumor. "It was devastating to hear them tell me it could be cancer, that it could be something that could end my running," she recalls. "It really made me grow up and mature." She made the decision to delay surgery until after cross country season, monitoring the tumor with frequent X-rays.

"I went through that whole summer thinking it could be my last season. Not knowing if I’d ever run again, I really concentrated on doing everything in my training — I was so focused, I can remember that time like it was yesterday. It made me so tough, and showed me how mature I could be. I saw that life was like sports, like running — whatever gets thrown at you, you have to change your strategy."

In a storybook ending, Tollefson won the NCAA cross country title, becoming the sixth ‘Nova champion in nine years.

After Christmas, surgeons operated on Tollefson’s heel, and found that the tumor, while benign, had dried up, leaving a large gap in the bone. An operation implanted bone from a cadaver into the cavity, stimulating the growth of new bone.

The surgery wiped out her indoor and outdoor season, but she returned in the fall to place 11th in the NCAA championships and help the Wildcats win their seventh national title after a four-year hiatus. She followed that up by winning the NCAA indoor 3,000 meter title, then became the first woman to win an outdoor 3,000/5,000 double.

After a redshirt fifth year in 2000, Tollefson made the move to the ranks of professional runners. "After winning nationals, I began thinking this might actually be something I could continue after college," she recalls. "Girls I’d looked up to growing up were actually getting paid to run. It was a good time to be a female athlete."

Trials, Tears and Triumph

Her transition to the open ranks coincided with the founding of Team USA Minnesota, a post-collegiate training group in the Twin Cities. Tollefson became a charter member, a move that proved symbiotic: she enjoyed training partners and coaching in her home state, while having a multiple national champion on its roster gave the group instant credibility. What followed was a steady ascension in the open ranks, with strong placings in her first national caliber meets. "It was like being a college freshman again, competing against lots of high school state champions. It takes a couple years to get back up to the front."

That progress was slowed by several nagging injuries that interrupted her training during the next two years. After overcoming a nasty case of plantar fasciitis, her buildup to the 2004 Olympics seemed to be right on course when she developed an abdominal hernia that made training and racing more painful as the season progressed. It all came crashing down in the Olympic Trials 5,000, where she finished sixth in 15:25.55, failing to make the team. "I had run 15:04 earlier, I thought I was going to the Olympics, and all of a sudden I wasn’t," she says.

She still had a fallback in the 1,500, although her focus all season had been on the 5K. "I have the world’s most supportive family — they weren’t going to let me go back home and mope for four years," she says. Her coach, Dennis Barker, advised her to try and see what happened.

Tollefson advanced to the final where, in another storybook ending, she led virtually the entire race to win in 4:08.32. "That’s one race that has definitely changed me," she says. "I really had to lean on my support system. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have made the team."

She spent the next several months racing in Europe, chasing the Olympic qualifying standard of 4:07.15, which she finally got in July with her 4:06.30 in Belgium. The pursuit of that time, running at less than 100 percent health, caught up to her in Athens, where she ran 4:08.55 and failed to advance to the finals.

Exemplary Word and Deeds

After an operation to repair the hernias (doctors discovered she actually had two tears in her abdominal muscle, as well as osteopubitis), Tollefson spent most of 2005 getting healthy and recharging her competitive batteries. She began 2006 with a bang, winning her first open national titles in 4K cross country and 3,000 indoors a week apart, then traveling to Russia and Japan to compete in the World Championships. With no major outdoor championships to focus on, she raced on the European circuit in a quest for fast times, but wound up running an unexpected 4:27.96 PR back home at the relatively low-key Falmouth Mile in August.

2007 brings the outdoor World Championships and a milestone birthday, both of which she looks forward to. "I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 18 years," she says. "Lots of people who I’ve run against have stopped — I’m so thankful I’ve been able to keep doing it.

"Through running, I’ve gotten to travel around the world and meet so many people — it’s meant so much to me. I’ve had big ups and downs — injuries and illness, for sure — but I wouldn’t change it for the world."

Through her accomplishments, and speaking engagements at numerous running camps and clinics, Tollefson has become a preeminent role model for the next generation of female runners in this country, for whom Title IX is so accepted it has become virtually transparent. "I remember growing up watching people like Mary Slaney and FloJo race," she recalls. "I never thought I could be like them. But now I love telling little girls they can grow up to become professional athletes, and they get really excited. It’s an awesome time to be a female, that’s for sure."